Book of the Day will highlight a book — generally related to design or development — that I think is worth the time to read along with why. As always when I write a about a book, my hope is to give some clues about the book to help you make the difficult decision about whether it’s a book for you. The only catch is that I won’t be publishing them daily.

Without further ado…

Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja

As developers, we frequently rely on the libraries and frameworks built by others, however an in-depth understanding of JavaScript library architecture remains a mystery to many. Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig is about designing, developing and maintaining your own JavaScript library. It is very hands-on with concepts being explained through code examples and tests (written of course with a set of custom test functions you learn to write in the second chapter). It dives into advanced concepts of JavaScript that will serve you along the way and then moves on to tackle the actual design and execution of a cross-browser compatible library.

If you plan to write your own JavaScript library or just want to develop deeper knowledge of JavaScript and understand the tricks and tools that others use when building frameworks then this is a great book for your bookshelf.